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August 26, 2005

Halo Coming to the Silver Screen

Halo, the great XBox game, is going to Hollywood. Here is the inside story from Bungie. The hollywood take on the story can be found here. Microsoft traded some of its cash for creative rights on the movie. Think it will work out? Can Microsoft and Bungie end up making a video game movie that doesn't suck? They don't have a lot of great competition. Let's see. Mario Brothers, Lara Croft, Street Fighter. You get the idea. Halo could make a really great setting for a movie ala Aliens or something. Then again, it could be as bad as any of the recent video game converts. Only time will tell.

-Godshatter

The Pursuit of Happiness

I was talking to a friend yesterday at lunch and came up with some thoughts on the concept of happiness. They are not fully fleshed out but here is the rough version.

Most people that go off in search of happiness don't find it. Why? Because happiness is not something that can be found by itself. It is the byproduct of other things and usually not the sort of things one does when one pursues it. Happiness comes from contentment with one's surroundings. It comes from the sense of fulfillment of a job well done. It doesn't come from achievement. Getting a promotion won't make you happy. It doesn't come from experience. Doing something fun doesn't cause lasting happiness. It doesn't come from change. Often people use happiness as an excuse to have an affair or get a divorce. Unfortunately, that doesn't work.

To be truly happy, the easiest way is to become content with who you are and what you have. Enjoying the present circumstances is a much more sure route to happiness than the pursuit of anything.

Think I'm on crack? Let me know in the comments.

-Godshatter

August 15, 2005

Where Director Escapes Once Again

I was driving with the Spousal Unit here, which is 30 miles past the boondocks, when I was pulled over by a county sheriff.

The last speeding ticket I had was around 1987. Since then I've gotten smarter about a few things.

In this case the officer was in an unmarked black Explorer and he paced me for quite some time. He said he had me doing 52 in a 40 mph zone plus 62 in a 50. I think I passed him and another car at one point.

I've had four speeding tickets but I've also been pulled over an additional six times without getting so much as a warning (other than verbal). This deputy scolded me, handed back my driver's license, then chased down some stupid kids on bullet bikes. I doubt he was as gracious with them.

August 12, 2005

It has begun

Blowing Smoke is a direct-to-online film. Congratulations to the filmmakers.

This is exactly the model I've been working towards myself. I expect it to work out fabulously for those able to create viable products.

August 07, 2005

The New Bad Guys

Hollywood has discovered the new film bad guys. Tired of Evil Drug Lords? Can't quite make Republicans evil and still get them to buy tickets? Evil Lawyers too boring? Afraid of calling terrorists evil?

Have no fear, the Evil Pharmaceutical Corporation is here to perform All the Evil In the Worldtm. The trailer for the upcoming film was so unnoticable that I can't even recall the title but in it Rampaging Drug Companies are killing people in Third World villages for profit.

Wall Street Journal reports that profits for Mega Zuess Drug and Influence Peddlers, Inc. rose for the second straight quarter due largely to a sharp increase in the deaths of villagers in remote locations. "Nothing pays like death," remarked CEO Cash N. Kerry. "Monkeys are too expensive for testing whereas dark-skinned villagers? Who cares?"

I mean, we all know that drug companies should exist for the good of the people, except for, you know, the people who own the company. They don't count as people.

And the deaths of untold millions due to malaria? Those deaths are clearly laid at the feet of the drug companies, not the Only Trying To Help activists who lied to get DDT banned. Of course they are.

UPDATE: The film is called The Constant Gardener. An intriguing title but I'm afraid that will be the most it has going for it.

August 06, 2005

Review: The Great Raid

Attended a sneek peak of The Great Raid which is based on the Army Ranger raid on the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philipinnes.

Look, I could go into typical film-review stuff about acting, cinematography and so on but about two minutes into the movie I wanted to shout at the Surrenderistas in the media, "Shut the hell up about Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay!" Until we get reports of prisoners being murdered, being burned alive or hung in the sun by one arm, just shut the hell up. There is no equvialence between starving to death and needing bigger jeans because prison food made you fat.

We tend to forget that at the time of World War II the Japanese and the Germans had some traits in common: unspeakable beastly brutality and intolerable racism. The Germans have (rightly) suffered for their acts but the Japanese have been treated more kindly by history, except by those who lived through it.

This is not a movie about American greatness. It is about civilization facing down it's vicious unyeilding enemies. The Japanese did not attempt to subjugate the entire Pacific because they were misunderstood or offended by percieved slights from Western democracies. It was because they thought they could get away with it and until free men stood up against their onslaught they were right.

During the credits the audience stayed quietly, respectfully, in their seats then with equal reverence filed out without comment to each other until reaching the hallway in honor of the brave deeds depicted in the film. The kind of deeds those crying loudest against our own country could never perform.

In the car afterwards, the Spousal Unit said, "Thank you for insisting on going to this movie. I loved it."

I loved it, too. See for yourself then tell the Surrenderistas to shut the hell up.